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Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The aroma of fall swept through the house as we baked these Swedish Gingersnaps...

I mentioned yesterday that we made two items this week for the Weekly Wednesday Treat Day - the blondies we already talked about which means this post is dedicated to these crackly and spicy Swedish Gingersnaps.

If you are looking for flavorful, sturdy and crisp (but not dry) cookie, then you owe it yourself to give these a chance. Ground ginger, cinnamon (I used the fierce Vietnamese cinnamon from Penzeys, cloves and a special "secret" addition of fresh ground pepper season the flour with such a sweet enticing fragrance. Augmenting the dough to a dark tan color with a snappy depth of flavor is a cup worth of thick molasses - this is added along with the granulated sugar when you are creaming the wet ingredients.

The non-sticky dough is then formed into large golf ball sized pieces and rolled in granulated sugar before baking to give the cookies sparkle and a bit of crunch to the outside. You may be tempted to flatten the dough balls, but resist that urge - they spread out just fine on their own and leaving them in this shape allows them to stay extra thick. Since the dough is already dark, baking until "golden" is not a good way to check for doneness. I found the texture to be best when the cookies have baked enough to form beautiful cracks and crevices, but not so long that those cracks look dry. You want them to glisten and look a little underdone still. After we finished trying a couple of cookies, we both quickly agreed that these just might take over one of the coveted spots in our Christmas gift baking bonanza we do each year!

I did a ginger cookie that sounds very similar for our holiday baking last year, but I didn't think the granulated sugar gave the cookies enough sparkle. Didn't want to spring for the super-expensive sanding sugar since I was baking in such bulk, so I wound up using turbinado sugar, Mostly it comes in the little brown packets, but you can find it by the box. Nice big grains, and since the cookies are so dark already it doesn't matter that the sugar isn't clear.

These sound really good. We bought some Swedish ginger biscuits last week, the tin is almost finished. We've also chosen Sweden as the next country that we're going to learn about so might just try making these. Thank you

Joey - Molasses and ginger...you can't go wrong there; this is one of my favorite combinations in the world. Have you tried Nigel Slater's double ginger cake? It is heavenly and perfect when the weather gets cold again (hardly what you're thinking about right now, I know).